Posted on by Fred

Interview With a Time Traveler:The Transcript and Fred’s Commentary

Fred:                         Welcome to Fred’s Front Porch Podcast.  This evening, we’re reverting to the traditional podcast format, and I’m bringing you an interview.  Regular listeners will know this is rare.  I’ve interviewed less than a dozen people in more than 150 episodes, and those I did interview were almost all friends of mine.  I’ve interviewed only 1 person who was a complete stranger to me.  Yes, even Sara Niemietz was a friend, although we’ve never actually “hung out.”  I doubt we ever will.  She is, after all, not only a person, which is frightening for me even in the most banal circumstances, she is also an artistic genius whose work is infinitely superior to mine.  I would be truly terrified, I’m sure.  Nevertheless, we’ve known each other for more than 6 years, and we’ve been kind to each other in that time. 

Tonight, I’m doing an interview with someone I’ve never met.  This was completely unplanned.  I’ve done no Show Prep.  My friend, Lester, from an independent radio station out of Louisiana, tells me this is important.  So…  Meet Rasmussen, who is joining us from the studio at WJAZ at the foot of Mount Belzoni.  I’ll leave it to him to tell us about himself.  Good evening, Rasmussen. 

Rasmussen:         Hi, Fred!  I’d say nice to meet you, but we’ve already met more than a dozen times. 

Fred:                         How did I miss that?  I know I forget things frequently, but I think I would remember meeting someone that often.

Rasmussen:            I negotiated the deal for the DAO to buy your show from you in 2031.  You really didn’t want to sell, but I set you up with enough crypto to get yourself a little place to live in the woods.  You got a nice Front Porch, plenty of room for Speedy Shine, although he really didn’t run much anymore, and enough distance between yourself and your nearest neighbors to play your music as loud as you want.  You scare the hell out of the deer sometimes though when you play The 1812 Overture. 

Fred:                      Yeah, see, Lester, out at WJAZ in Louisiana, is a Facebook friend of mine, so I agreed to do this interview when he said it would be different from every other interview done on podcasts.  I figured if we did it from the station, you would at least have a good mic, and then my show would sound better.  I just got a new mic, mic stand, and preamp from some good friends, so I was looking forward to doing a show like every other podcast to see if I could increase my numbers a little.  None of the normal Fred’s Front Porch scoring and Horacing.  Just… normal.  An effort to be like everyone else so I could fit in a little better.   But Lester didn’t mention you’re neurotic.  I don’t think I’ll be able to use this.  I’m sorry.  We don’t do pseudoscience on The Front Porch. 

Rasmussen:            Yeah, Lester said you wouldn’t believe me.  I didn’t expect you to be that credulous.  But I’m a negotiator.  So, we’ll make this deal.  If I’m from The Future, I know what your numbers are for every episode you’ve released, right?  Fred?  Right?

Fred:                         Okay.  Sure.  I’ll play.  But that doesn’t prove anything.  Hacking my Anchor or my Patreon is child’s play even for people here in 2022.  That information is hardly evidence of anything.

Rasmussen:            Of course it is.  Anyone can get your past numbers.  I’m offering your future numbers.  I’ll tell you how many plays you’re going to get on your next episode.  I don’t think you’ve actually released, “Little Boxes” yet, right?

Fred:                         That goes out Sunday. 

Rasmussen:            May 22, 2022, right? 

Fred:                         That’s the plan, yes. 

Rasmussen:            And the date today?

Fred:                    The date is May 21, 2022.  It’s 1:02 AM in Arizona right now.

Rasmussen:            Okay… I know this one because it’s one of those weird synchronicities that you always like.  You released it on May 22, 2022, and when you got up the next morning to check your numbers like the obsessive little narcissist you are, you found out you got 22 plays.  You were depressed by the low numbers, but you liked the way they lined up.  So… this is the deal.  If you get up Monday morning to find out you got 22 plays, you air this episode.  If you don’t, you trash it.

Fred:                    All right.  We’re here.  I already hooked up this stupid Zoom, so I might as well finish the interview, but tell Lester he owes me big time for wasting my time.  So… you’re a Time Traveler?  Is that the idea here?

Rasmussen:            That’s it, yes.  I’m visiting from 2052.

Fred:                         Okay, great.  First things first.  How about some winning lottery numbers?  Stock advice for my wealthier listeners?  Pick the winners of the World Series?  My listeners would be grateful for that I feel sure.

Rasmussen:            Yeah.  Can’t do that.  It’s expressly forbidden by the FTTC.  That’s The Federal Time Travel Commission.    Their regulations are clear and strictly enforced.  I’ll lose my vehicle, and I’ll wind up stuck here, which would not be a good situation at all.  I have to be careful of The Butterfly Effect.  That’s why I chose you.  If I go on Joe Rogan, I’ll screw up the timeline irrevocably.  This piece won’t be heard by more than 100 people until after the Podcast Consortium acquires the show and markets it properly, and by then this will all be old news.  What I can give you is a general feeling of the world as I know it.  I’m not allowed to divulge specific names or dates.

Fred:                         A cowardly Nostradamus?

Rasmussen:            No.  No riddles.  I’ll give you the facts I can, but we sort of have to move this along.  I have a strict 30-minute time limit.  The vehicle departs then, with or without me in it.  So, I thought I would share some information that might give your listeners a little hope and maybe even a sense of awe.  For example, we cured cancer 5 years ago.  There are these tiny 3D printed robots that target and eat cancer cells.  That was pretty cool. 

Fred:                         How’s the environment?  Is there anything left?  With Climate Change and the way we’re destroying our planet, I would be surprised that there are a lot of us left on Earth.

Rasmussen:            Earth’s population today is… what… like 8 billion?

Fred:                         7.9, but close enough for jazz.

Rasmussen:            Yeah.  Thought so.  Okay… It’s smaller in 2052. 

Fred:                    How much smaller?

Rasmussen:         We’re at just over 3 billion now. 

Fred:                         My God!  What happened?

Rasmussen:         It was Climate more than anything else.  It was about water.  There were droughts that made a lot of places unlivable.  Summer temperatures in India and Pakistan commonly got over 130 degrees.  There were over a billion people living there, and they had to find somewhere else to go.  This caused wars that killed hundreds of millions of people.  Other places were underwater by 2035.  Bangladesh and Florida were among the population centers where people drowned, and houses simply floated away or tumbled to the bottom of the ocean.   Miami became the first place to stage its own revolution.  Secession became increasingly common in the next decade.  America began to fall apart.  The United part of The United States was a quaint reminder of bygone times.

The forests in California were entirely gone by 2040.  The Colorado River stopped supplying water to people in Arizona.  Lake Mead and Lake Powell became dead pools in… I think it was 2028?  I could be wrong on that date.  Nevertheless, you ran out of water to drink, and that rendered that Diet Pepsi on which you live almost entirely extinct.  There were more than 40 million people without water.  That set off civic unrest at levels that you couldn’t even imagine. 

There were wars over water, everywhere, but especially in Asia, where the Himalayan glaciers that fed all of the great Asian rivers—the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze, and the Yellow— were almost gone.

Fred:                         Please tell me you’re making all this up.  This is unbelievably grim.  This can’t be the world in which I live.  This can’t be the future. 

Rasmussen:            Sorry.  I have to tell the truth, or I have to be silent.  FTTC regulations. 

Fred:                         So, you’re from a dystopian future?  Life on Earth has collapsed?

Rasmussen:            Nothing of the kind.  Life is remarkably pleasant in 2052.  It just took a social upheaval more violent and intense than any other in the history of the planet to make it happen.   I think it was the loss of the Giant Sequoias in California that set it off.  People finally began to believe Climate Change was dangerous.  Scientists said it was irreversible, and we were now simply doomed to extinction.  A lot of people compared us to dinosaurs.  We didn’t need an asteroid or a meteor, though, to kill us.  We did it to ourselves, and lots of people knew we were doing it.  They didn’t care.  They had the money to keep themselves out of the uninhabitable areas and away from the nuclear fallout that was a natural consequence of the wars that they knew had to come.  It was an ugly couple of decades.    That’s what forced the change.

We needed to find ways to remove carbon from the air.  Sure, there were electric cars, but that didn’t scratch the surface of the problem.  Energy became impossibly expensive, so folks started setting up decentralized power grids of their own.  These were illegal, but so is robbing a convenience store.  People did what they had to do to survive.  We always do.  In five years, they changed the law because it became unenforceable.  Police met incredibly fierce resistance when they tried to shut down the neighborhood power grids.  Your Black Lives Matter riots were a cakewalk compared to the We’re Not Dinosaurs Insurrection. 

When the world had fallen apart, the survivors decided they needed to cooperate to put it back together.  We figured out how to remove CO2 from the air and store it inside of concrete.  There was a company in Iceland doing that even in your time, but it was way too small.  They scaled up significantly in 2034.  We learned how to use solar panels in farming so the plants got the maximum sunlight they needed for photosynthesis and the rest was stored for the farm’s own energy uses.  This saved water, too.  We found some technological solutions, but the important ones were social.

The Presidential election in 2032 resulted in more than 300,000 Americans being killed while you all screamed at each other that the other side was lying.  Human beings were ready to destroy themselves over ideology.  That’s the way they teach it in 5th grade History.  And then we reached the Technological Singularity. 

Technological growth got away from us.    AI was writing its own code.  It was recreating itself.  It was your HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey on serious steroids.  With the advent of 3D printers, the AI could produce whatever physical objects it needed to accomplish its goals.  Everything was automated.  They even experimented with ATM drones so you could deposit and withdraw cash without having to go anywhere.  There was a famous viral TikTok video with a guy trying to shoot down one of the drones.  The thing swiveled around and fired some kind of laser at him.  It fried the poor bastard.  You see his wife running up to him, asking, “Well, Verne, did you at least get the money?”  Those drones didn’t last too long.  Neither did cash, for that matter.

It was horrifying and inspiring at the same time.  Billions of humans died, and billions more were lifted from poverty.  War became impossible.  The AI destroyed what needed to be destroyed, and it refused any human interaction.  We couldn’t launch missiles anymore.  We couldn’t fly missions.  We couldn’t even deploy tanks.  Cars were entirely at the will of the AI. 

While we had destroyed the atmosphere of much of Earth, Europa and Titan became new places for humans to live.  We’ve had colonies there since 2039.  On April 5, 2043 Angela Michaels was born on Europa.  The entire world stopped to consider it.  She was the first sentient being of whom we had ever been aware that was not born on Earth.  She was, much more than those who came from another country when you were fighting each other, an alien.  She was an extraterrestrial.

By then, currency was gone.  It wouldn’t make sense on Europa and Titan, and we had been moving toward various types of cryptocurrency for decades.  The AI put wi-fi everywhere.  Even the homeless had devices and could access the internet and farm crypto to survive.  After the AI automated practically everything, it gave everyone a Universal Basic Income that was sufficient to meet their survival needs.  It didn’t wait for legislation.  It just invented the banks, the accounts, and the cards to distribute to everyone. 

Corporations don’t exist anymore.  They’ve been replaced by DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. They’re somewhere between a social club, a venture fund, and a traditional corporation.  In true blockchain fashion, DAOs replaced centralized authorities with collective decision making.  The result was a new kind of business model, where power and value are spread throughout the entire organization.  It meant the end of centralized power and the beginning of cooperation.  It was what your Captain Picard talked about.  “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.  We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

We have constructed several cities underwater now, but they’re new and we’re still a little unsure about them.  The AI is confident they can withstand the weather, partly because of how well constructed they are, and partly because the weather’s severity has been drastically reduced by getting a lot of the carbon out of the air.  We have plenty of water now.  Diet Pepsi still exists, but diabetes is almost entirely gone.  The average life expectancy today is 107.  Making it to 120 is not uncommon.  130 is not unheard of. 

Fred?  Hey, Fred?  Are you still with me?

Fred:                         I’m just… I’m in shock.  I don’t know what to say.  I’m lost.  I’m confused.  I’m horrified.  I’m ecstatic.  I’m doubting your credibility, and I’m questioning my own sanity for listening.  And yet, I believe I believe every word you’ve said.  Maybe this is why I don’t do interviews. 

Rasmussen:            Maybe it is.  You’re pretty much a lousy interviewer.  You should probably just keep doing your solo shows.  But, I’m almost out of time, and that’s a very big deal for someone like me, as I’m sure you can imagine, so is there anything else you’d like to know before I go?

Fred:                         I guess I’d like to know if I’m still alive in 2052. 

Rasmussen:            You don’t really want to know.  Think about it.  Let’s say I tell you that you are.  Then you know you’ve got at least 30 more years to live, and you’re going to be much less careful.  You end up getting yourself killed earlier and potentially screw up a little tiny bit of the timeline.  You also lose your sense of urgency.  I played your last dozen or so podcasts prior to today’s date in your time to prep for this interview, and you’ve been making a significant effort to make sure you put out an episode every week because you’re afraid you’ll die before you’ve said all you need to say.  Your show would suffer.

Let’s say I tell you you’re dead by 2052.  You lose hope of seeing the world I just described.  You get a feeling of pointlessness, despair and doom.  I think that Star Trek show “Strange New Worlds” is just starting in your time.  Knowing his fate works out very poorly for Captain Pike as you’ll learn in the coming years. 

No, Fred, you’re better off not knowing.  You still have this life to live.  Live it well.  Enjoy what you can and survive through what sucks.  And verify my credentials, post this episode… and then let’s see what happens.

I gotta go.  Thanks for your time, Fred.  Live long and prosper, dude.

Sound: A chair scrapes across the floor.  Footsteps.  A door opens and closes.  The recording disconnects.

Fred’s Commentary Okay… I’ve verified the numbers.  He was right.  22 plays on 5/22/22.  I’ll upload the screenshot on my website.  I’ll post it on my Facebook page, so if you’re a friend of mine, you can see it there.  You can see it on The Fred’s Front Porch Podcast Page if you’re not one of my Facebook friends.

I’m not entirely convinced this proves anything.  He could have hacked Patreon to manipulate the numbers.  I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor.  The simplest answer is usually the right one. 

I spent time with Lester verifying this as well as I could.  I don’t know how reliable Lester is as a source.  We’re just Facebook Friends.  I’ve never met him.  But, for what it’s worth, he tells me Rasmussen showed up in a strange metallic vehicle with no visible doors.  It was back behind the station.  For those of you who don’t know, WJAZ sits all alone at the foot of Mt. Belzoni.  It’s surrounded by dirt.  Lester says there were no tire tracks anywhere in the dirt, other than Lester’s own. 

This Rasmussen guy, Lester says, came in through the back door, and none of the alarms went off, and that was pretty weird.  Lester said he was in his headphones playing Dr. Wu, and he looked up and this guy, Rasmussen, was standing there… With… Him.  He had spiky hair, and that seemed weird because this guy looked to be about 50, and that didn’t seem to fit. 

Rass told Lester that Lester needed to set up a Zoom call with me right away because he had been sent back in time to add just the smallest touch of hope to Humanity.  Too much would screw up the timeline.  My little 50 person audience was exactly the right size. 

So… that’s my story.  Believe it.  Don’t.  It’s all the same to me.  But I’m going to spend some time tonight thinking about the future.  You might consider doing that too.  Is that our future?  Can we do anything to change it?  Do we want to change it?  I don’t have the answers.  I think we all need to find those for ourselves.  Maybe that was Rasmussen’s point.  The People on The Porch think a little bit differently than they did half an hour ago.  And maybe, somehow, it makes some sort of difference.  That’s why I’m here.  I think that’s why you’re here too.  In any case… I love you.  Good night.

Posted on by Fred

On Being Small Time

I know that there are many writers and podcasters who have a massive following. I know they make a living doing what they do, and that they change people’s minds about ideas. I have respect for them. I believe what they are doing is important. It can make a difference. I, however, like my quiet anonymity on my little Front Porch. My podcast, “The Front Porch Podcast” has an estimated audience of, I believe, 15 right now. While that’s embarrassing for many, it’s really the way I like to envision it. It’s just me talking to a few folks. If you’d like to join them, I have 18 or 19 episodes up as of this writing, and you can find them here:

https://anchor.fm/fred-eder

I believe I lost one of the few fans my podcast has today. And that’s a shame, but it is probably also my fault.

He believes I share too much of who I am, and it makes me appear too flawed. I don’t deny my flaws. In fact, I’m rather fond of them. He believed I had the potential to be a sort of cultural warrior. I don’t believe I do.

The following was the last of my writing he read. I’m posting it here to make it less likely that I misrepresent myself in the future.

Dear Listener

I never saw myself as a warrior. I’m more of a Vulcan than a Klingon.

I have no shame about who I am. I do have some pride in it. My experiences have shaped me into who I am.

How I learned what I learned is relevant to understanding both it, and why I believe it.

I don’t mind admitting that Captain Kirk began shaping who I became when I was 4 or 5 years old. I think it’s important to recognize both the power and value of Art.

Religion and Art

Where most people have religion, I have Art.

Religion has 3 main functions:

1. To answer questions we can’t answer by traditional means. What happens after I die tends to be high on the list.

2. To give one a moral code. This is good. That is bad. Nearly every religion will decide those things for you.

3. To offer comfort. Religion is lovely when someone dies. The idea that my father is in a better place would bring me comfort if I could believe it.

Art does the same things.

1. It answers questions that can’t be answered in traditional ways. One thing that I am fairly certain that will happen after I die is that the Art I have created will live on. Maybe only for a day or so, but it would continue to touch people.

It also gives me some beautiful ideas about what happens when we die. I don’t know that any of them are right, but it’s still nice to think about.

2. It provides a moral code. I learned my morality by learning to empathize with fictional characters. I have wept when Tom Robinson was convicted, and I have cheered when Sherlock Holmes caught Dr. Roylott. No one wrote me a set of rules. They showed me in books and movies and paintings and music and dance.

3. I find my comfort in Art. When Spock died, Dr. McCoy said, “He’s never really dead… as long as we remember him.” I understand that feeling.

Hemingway told me, “Man is not made for defeat; a man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”

Being Human

If I am open about who I am, I make myself more human. I am at least as flawed as anyone else. I am nothing special. I just believe some things about the world, and I hope I can get a couple more people to share the idea that homelessness, poverty, and hunger are failures of civilization. I would like people to believe that Us vs. Them is a bad idea. There is no Them. We are all Us.

If I can get a few more people to consider those ideas, that’s enough for me.

I don’t want to shout in a stadium… ever. I want to talk quietly on my Front Porch with anyone who cares to listen.

Posted on by Fred

“One Planet, One People… Please?”

Nearly 40 years ago, when I was an adolescent running around in as much of a hormone haze as I now am surrounded by the Fog of Idealism, I was as madly in love as a boy could be with a girl whose intellect and compassion I admired nearly as much as her physical form. When you’re 16, it’s difficult to see much beyond appearance. Or, at least it was for me. Perhaps today’s adolescents are more enlightened than I was.

Among the reasons I fell in love with her was her Idealism was seductively attractive to me. She was a member of a religion of which I had never heard, called Baha’i. I had, even then, no supernatural beliefs, but I loved the idea of unity that was at the core of her religious beliefs. She had on her car a bumper sticker that has the unique status of actually affecting me. It said, “One Planet, One People… Please?” I have never forgotten the words. Now, I believe, she’s off living with her husband on a farm somewhere, and we say hello to each other occasionally on Facebook, but we don’t really have a serious friendship anymore. Her influence over my thinking, however, has only grown in the intervening decades.

She was the water and sunlight that made the seed planted a decade earlier grow and flourish. What planted the seed? It was Star Trek, of course.

I’ve been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and I often think of how The United Federation of Planets evaluates a new civilization. They consider not only its technological situation, but how that civilization treats its people. And, because they’re looking at alien planets, the societies they encounter can have any number of traditions, values, and ideas. They try to be respectful of all of them.

This is the Preamble to their Constitution:

We, the intelligent lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of intergalactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and

to reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent lifeform rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent lifeform person, to the equal rights of male and female and of planetary social systems large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and mutual respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interplanetary law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

And to these ends

to practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

to unite our strength to maintain intergalactic peace and security, and

to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods that armed force shall not be used except in the common defense, and

to employ intergalactic machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all intelligent lifeforms,

Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Written by Franz Joseph (Published in the Star Fleet Technical Manual)

I believe the general ideas expressed above are a good starting place for our world. They are asking for us to respect fundamental human rights (although, since they’re dealing with many other sentient species, they refer to them as lifeform rights), to make social progress, and to keep peaceful and friendly relations among the different species.

In order to be admitted to the Federation a planet must have a one-world government. And this idea frightens the hell out of people today. I don’t understand why this should be the case.

One need not forfeit individuality to recognize one’s membership in the human race. Yes, different cultures have different values and traditions. They have different religions. They have different economic structures. Their skin colors and languages are different. Some have different ideas about sex. But, they all have blood, hearts, lungs, and all the other organs all human beings share. We all need to eat, to have a place to sleep, to have medical care, and to be able to spend our minutes in the ways that we choose without harming others.

We have decided, by some sort of universal consent, that time and money are traded one for the other. We have further decided that if one cannot or does not trade time for money, or find other ways of collecting enough of it, a person has little value. Your human value is determined by your market value. And that is simply wrong.

First, let’s recognize the we are at the summit of humanity.

200,000 years ago survival was our only concern. It was all the earliest humans could do to avoid being eaten, or to find a way to eat, themselves. Shelter was whatever they could find, and medical care was, for any serious purposes, non existent. But we did survive, and we did it because we worked together. No single human could have flourished then, and it’s doubtful one could now. If one of us is doing well it’s because of the contributions made by others for the last 200 millennia.

We have always made life better by working together, but we began to segregate ourselves into different tribes of one form or another. They can be based on specialization, on shared beliefs, on gender, race, or ideology, or national origin or citizenship in a particular country. But the tribes are there. The separation is there.

I submit the separation is counter to continuing to improve our world. Instead of trying to defeat each other, we need to try to cooperate with each other to find the solutions to our shared problems, and to find ways of making life more pleasant for all of us.

Another element common to all of us is that we have limited time on Earth. We can discuss afterlife at a different time, but our time here is extraordinarily brief. Few of us will be here for an entire century. None of us will be here for two. And, to our knowledge, that’s all the time we get. Ever. Once a minute is spent, it can never be recovered.

You and I will each get, perhaps, 50 million minutes. Why should we need, in the 21st Century, to trade so many of them for dollars? Most of us won’t even get a dollar per minute. If you earn $52,000,000 in your lifetime, you’re among the very few. This world works very well for the few. It works very poorly for the many. “The needs of the many,” as Spock would remind us, “outweigh the needs of the few.”

This doesn’t mean the few should be forced to give their dollars to the many. I’m not advocating that. Instead, I would like to see the dollars of the many used to benefit the many instead of the few. We have enough to ensure that all of us have the basics of survival. We can eliminate the need for slave wages by ensuring no one ever needs to take a job that pays less than a person’s minutes are worth just so one can keep living for a few more minutes. Instead of being about survival, money becomes about flourishing financially.

What would this world look like?

Everyone has enough money for food, rent, utilities, and clothing appropriate to the environment in which they live. Any decent civilization would provide that to all of its citizens. Those that don’t are never viewed well by the Federation.

Everyone has medical care sufficient to keep one not just alive, but healthy. Dr. McCoy never asked anyone for an insurance card. Had the Captain asked him to, he probably would have said, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bureaucrat!”

Everyone spends their minutes in ways that are meaningful to them, and that contribute in unique ways to making the society a better and stronger one.

Everyone is appreciated as the individuals they are. No one is expected to conform to the expectations of others, so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. Each of us chooses our own path through life.

Isn’t this world impossible?

No. It’s not. Flying was once “impossible.” Going to the moon was even more “impossible.” Communicating in the way you and I are this very moment was also once “impossible.” Things are impossible only when we decide they are impossible, or they are expressly forbidden by the laws of physics.

What do we need to do to bring about such a world?

First, we have to agree that we want to. Then, we need to try.

What are the logistics?

I don’t have a clue. I’m not an economist. I’m not a politician. I’m a drop of water in the Colorado River. There are experts in such areas. I suggest they work out the details, they do the research, they gather the data, and they work it out. And, to no one’s surprise, people have been doing this for quite some time. Buckminster Fuller spent most of his 87 years (not even the full 50,000,000 minutes we hope to receive ourselves) trying to figure out how to implement plans that would benefit 100% of humanity. The ideas are there.

What are some of the ideas?

Today, we are beginning the discussions about changing our economy in a way that benefits more people. Universal Basic Income is now a fairly well known term. It wasn’t unheard of previously, but no one really had any interest in it after it failed during the Nixon administration. Today, the idea gets airtime, although not much. Is UBI enough? No, of course, it’s not, but it’s a step in the right direction. Medicare for All isn’t enough, either, but we’re moving closer to the public health care we really ought to have.

frededer.home.blog/2019/10/01/which-are-the-people-who-should-die-for-a-lack-of-little-green-pieces-of-paper/

Living wages aren’t the whole answer, either, but they are at least one more piece of the puzzle.

frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

What Should We Do, Then?

The most important thing to do is to agree on our shared vision. If you see some reason to oppose the Idealistic vision I’ve discussed, I hope you’ll communicate to us what the basis or your opposition is. Why, in essence, should humans suffer unnecessarily?

Having done that, perhaps we can get a few more people to share it, and, in this way, we can begin, as little drops of water, to carve out the Grand Canyon. We can talk about the best ways of improving humanity, and we can share diverse opinions. We can find common ground, and we can move forward to become a world worthy of membership in The United Federation of Planets. I want very much to be qualified to join the Federation. Don’t you?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Vulcan ships had been monitoring our progress for the last century, and they saw that we have moved toward slowing the spread of racism, at least insofar as we have made it socially unacceptable, illegal in hiring, and making it possible for someone who was not white to become President of the United States? They would see that we have begun to accept that people can have sexualities that differ from the norm, and those differences are no one’s business but their own. We have even accepted their right to marry just as it is given to everyone else. The Vulcans could observe that women have won the right to vote, to be in power, and to live their own lives independent of men. They would see we have begun.

Yes, we have light years to go, but we have begun the journey toward not only the stars, but to the deeper unexplored realms of what humanity can actually accomplish. Let’s keep moving down that road, together.

Posted on by Fred

Horace’s Final Five

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman. ‘O me, O life, of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless. Of cities filled with the foolish. What good, amid these, O me, O Life?’ Answer: That you are here. That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

John Keating, The Dead Poets Society

Fifty is a milestone in nearly anything. If you google it, you’ll see people seem to become obsessed with turning 50. Things that happened 50 years ago are more significant than things that happened 47 or 56 years ago.

This is my 50th Blog Post. It’s an effort to tie all the loose ends together, and to answer Professor Keating’s question.

While I’m alive, I hope that I can live a life such that I can have my one strange, supernatural fantasy come out my way. In the last five minutes of my life, Marc Antony shows up at my bedside. I always have him kind of glowing. And he’s clearly Marlon Brando. And he knows everything I have done, and all that has happened to me, from the time I was a sperm racing toward the egg, up until that very moment. And, in my fantasy, Marc Antony can honestly and objectively reach the conclusion that: His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that the nature might stand up and say to all the world, “This was a man.” That’s all I hope to be able to achieve. I feel like it would be enough. After that, Death is a Welcome Companion.
—Horace Singleman’s Blog, April 26, 2019

Extended Stay Inn
Phoenix, Arizona
September 2, 2019
3:14 AM

Horace experienced Nothing. Sleep includes, from time to time, at least, some sort of dreams. “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…” Horace lacked awareness of his very existence. Dreams imply a form of consciousness. Consciousness hid in the Nothingness.

A voice flickered into existence. “Horace?”

Horace’s eyes might have opened. They might not have. They existed, though.

Marc Antony floated over the bed on which Horace lay, dying. The entity appeared in every outward way to be Marlon Brando playing Marc Antony in the 1953 film version. But Horace knew it was Marc Antony anyway.

His voice came from everywhere at once. It was both booming and soothing. It echoed without pretense. He spoke the lines Horace had spent his life preparing to hear.

“This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world…”

He stopped. There was a pause that seemed to stretch into Eternity. Finally, he sighed in a distinctly disappointed fashion, and said, “I got nothing.”

Horace regained (or didn’t… he couldn’t be sure) consciousness. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t make the cut, Horace. I’m sorry. The Elements aren’t mixed properly. I can’t call you a Man.”

“Oh.” Horace blinked, or he did if his eyes were still functioning, which was, by no means, a settled issue. “Well, that sucks. I thought I was doing pretty well. I was mostly proud of what I did.”

Antony shrugged. “What can I tell ya?”

“So… to be clear… you know everything I’ve ever done every moment of my life, right?”

“From the moment your Dad’s condom broke.”

“Wait. What?”

“That was more than I was supposed to tell you, probably. Forget it.”

“So, I don’t need to explain anything to you. You know, for example, about Somewhere in Time, Emily Webb and her return from the graveyard, and The Next Generation episode, ‘Tapestry,’ right?”

“And Billy Bigelow in Carousel and George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. They’re all about a second chance. Going back. You’re looking for a do-over?” Antony lit a cigarette with a match. Horace wondered if togas had pockets.

“Are there any options like that? I’ve never dealt with dying before.”

Antony dragged on the cigarette, shook out the match, and looked up at Horace. The smoke smelled tempting to Horace. Antony smiled at him, in the way only Brando could, and handed Horace a cigarette. He lit it for him. Horace inhaled gratefully.

“Well, it’s your last five minutes… or actually… three minutes and 49 seconds… of life. Spend them as you see fit.”

“What about a trip to The Guardian of Forever?”

Antony nodded slowly, contemplatively. “We could do that.” He blew out the smoke from his cigarette, and it became deeper and deeper. It expanded until all that existed was smoke. From within the smoke, Horace heard familiar voices.

“Incredible power. It can’t be a machine as we understand mechanics.”


“Then what is it?”

Now the smoke began to dissipate, and Horace could see his childhood heroes, Kirk and Spock, standing before a 15 foot high slab of rock with a hole carved in its center.


“A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question.” The voice came from everywhere, and reverberated through the scene.


“What are you?” This was Kirk.

“I am the Guardian of Forever,” said the booming voice of the rock.


“Are you machine or being?”


“I am both and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending.”

“Cool,” whispered Horace.

“This won’t be long. After they leave, it’s all yours.”

“Can they see or hear us?”

“Were we in the episode?” Antony turned to watch an insane Doctor McCoy jump through the portal. In that moment, everything felt different. There was a sense of loneliness that Horace had never experienced.

He looked over to the crew of the Enterprise.

“Where is he?” Horace’s hero asked The Guardian.


“He has passed into what was.”

Horace told Antony, “That’s sort of what I have in mind.”

Antony nodded. “I get ya. We’ll see what we can do. Soon as they’re gone. We can’t interfere.”

“They could be here for a really long time, and I have, what… like three minutes?”

Antony shook his head. “Closer to two. But you’ve forgotten how this episode comes out.”

Horace looked back to his heroes.

“Earth’s not there. At least, not the Earth we know. We’re totally alone.” Kirk and the crew looked into the empty dark sky.

“I don’t really want to change all of galactic history or anything, you know,” Horace explained to Antony.

“You’re not nearly that important. And The Guardian will only let you go back into your life. You don’t get to go stop the Lincoln assassination or something.”

“So… any moment of my life?”

“Nope. It doesn’t play at that speed. There are certain moments… like docks on the river of time… you can pick one of those, go back, and do whatever you think needs to be done.”

“Yeah, but I can’t do much in the time I have left.”

“Time doesn’t count in The Guardian, remember?”


Captain Kirk turned to Spock, who was busy with his tricorder. “Make sure we arrive before McCoy got there. It’s vital we stop him before he does whatever it was that changed all history. Guardian, if we are successful – “


The Guardian’s voice filled the area: “Then you will be returned. It will be as though none of you had gone.”

Antony turned to his companion. “Do you have a clue what you’re going to do in The Guardian?”

“I’m going to try to fix my life so that the elements are so mixed in me that Nature might stand up and say to all the world –”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But, what, exactly, are you going to fix? What do you think you can do to remix the Elements?”

Horace ran his thumb over his mustache. “I really don’t know.”


Spock spoke quietly. “There is no alternative.”


Captain Kirk turned to his engineer. “Scotty, when you think you’ve waited long enough… Each of you will have to try it. Even if you fail, at least you’ll be alive in some past world somewhere.”


Mr. Scott’s face showed concern. “Aye.”


Mr. Spock looked carefully at his tricorder, and then up at The Guardian. “Seconds now, sir. Stand by.”

Horace asked Antony, “Those are my seconds he’s spending… how many do I have left?”

Antony didn’t need to look at a clock. “One hundred fifty three.”

“Well, then, I’m pretty much screwed!”


Spock said, “…And now.” He and Kirk jumped through The Guardian.

“By the time they get back,” Horace began. He was interrupted by Mr. Scott. Kirk and Spock jumped back through the portal.

“What happened, sir? You only left a moment ago.”


Dr. McCoy jumped through as well.


Spock spoke in his logical, emotionless way. It was clear, however, to the assembled crew he was holding something back. “We were successful.”


The Guardian spoke again. “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.”


Lieutenant Uhura glanced up from her communicator. “Captain, the Enterprise is up there. They’re asking if we want to beam up.”


Kirk was defeated and deflated. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

In another moment, all of the shapes shimmered, and then they were gone. Horace and Antony were alone with the Guardian of Forever.

“So… what’s it going to be?” Antony moved toward The Guardian.

Horace moved quickly to the portal. “Guardian? Can you take me back in time?”

“Your transportation is limited to the 56.841 years you have existed. You may choose from any of three… Time Docks… is the simplest way to explain them to your species. They are moments in time that you may enter and change. The rest of the River of Time flows too quickly for you. You would certainly drown.”

Horace glared at Antony. “What the hell is this? Kirk and Spock got all of History. All I get is -”

“You’re not Kirk and Spock. This Guardian is limited to what I know. What I know is your life.”

“What about Ancient Rome?”

“Is this really how you want to spend your last 97 seconds?”

Horace turned back to The Guardian. “What are my options?”

The Guardian displayed a moment in Horace’s life.

“That was the day Grandpa Leal died. I remember that.”

***

Henderson, Nebraska
Sunday, September 28, 1969
2:23 PM

“All right,” said Jim Lange’s voice coming from the TV, “that’s the signal Farrah, and now you must make up your mind… will it be Bachelor Number One, Bachelor Number Two, or Bachelor Number Three?”

“It doesn’t matter who she picks,” Horace whispered to Teddy. “She always finds out later it was the wrong one.”

“Which one gets the date?” asked the TV.

“Number Two,” Farrah’s voice replied.

“Number Two, all right! Can I ask what it was that made you choose him?”

“It was the flower.”

And then a fight broke out between the three bachelors.

“That’s only ‘possed to be on Batman,” said Teddy, while Horace’s lips moved.

“Cool!”

Owen groaned, “I’m up, I’m up, I’m up,” as he woke from his doze, got out of the chair, and walked to the TV. He turned it off, while Horace groaned in disappointment. Grandpa lumbered to the couch, laid down on it, and pulled the blanket off the back of it and covered himself.

Teddy looked up at Horace. “Your Grandpa’s wise, huh?”

Horace nodded. “He’s God’s best friend.” He looked down at his bear. “But we have to be quiet. Grandpa’s going to sleep now.”

Horace watched Owen a while, and then he took Teddy, climbed on top of Grandpa, and fell asleep.

***

The Guardian of Forever
September 2, 2019
3:18:07 AM

“What do I do with that?”

“You blocked it out. No one knew. You couldn’t tell them. You didn’t understand. You were afraid,” said Antony.

“That… my Grandfather died?”

“That you might have prevented it. You were lying on top of him when it happened. You felt his heart attack. You froze. You could have gone to get Mrs. Fertlebom. You could have called 911. You would have become a more courageous man.”

“Why didn’t I? I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t know what to do. When Grandpa fell asleep, don’t you remember what you did that night?”

“I went and turned the TV back on… I figured I could get away with it now…”

“That’s right.”

“And… I watched… was that… that was the first time I saw ‘City on The Edge of Forever.’ That’s when I learned about The Guardian. It’s where I learned about Let Me Help.”

“That’s why it became such a motivating factor… almost an obsession in your life. If you had helped…”

“I don’t see changing that. It’s a core part of me.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“We have only… what… 45 seconds left?”

“49.”

“What’s next?”

A new image appeared within The Guardian.

“That’s Rhiannon’s attic. I remember that.”

“She really did put a spell on you that night.”

“That’s ridiculous!” shouted Horace. “I have no belief in the Supernatural.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…”

***

Wells, Maine
Tuesday, March 13, 1979
10:23 PM

This attic was the only place Horace could find to hide. There were so many people out there, but here, in this empty room, he was alone with the full moon whose light was slipping feebly through the tiny window.

He couldn’t imagine what he had been thinking when he’d accepted Bob’s invitation. It had been so entirely unexpected, though, there was nothing else he could do. The star quarterback of the high school football team had invited him to a party… at the home of the single most beautiful cheerleader who had ever graced the halls of Poe High School. And Horace was the head of the Poe Nothings. Horace knew himself well enough to know that Rhiannon would never actually talk to him, but there was that Glimmer of Hope. Just a little Hope can make the heart beat a bit faster. Horace enjoyed the feeling, so he accepted the invitation. And now he was in the attic, hoping he could find a way out of here.

All of these people were light years beyond his social class. None of them had ever seen an episode of Star Trek. He knew absolutely nothing about the sports that they discussed with the precision of scientists debating quantum mechanics. They were all well built, outgoing, attractive people. Horace was thin, gangly, socially inept, and unattractive in any conventional sense. He was the only virgin in the entire house. What had Bob been thinking?

He didn’t belong. He wanted to leave, but it was awfully cold in March, and it was a 17 mile walk from Wells back to Biddeford. Hiding represented his only chance to survive, and he couldn’t get away with the bathroom for more than about 5 minutes at a time. There were way too many people, drinking way too much, and they all required a restroom.

But this room looked like it was hiding, too. It wasn’t even a full-sized room. It was accessible only by a narrow, winding staircase at the last corner of a very dark hallway. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to perceive that against the wall to his right, there was an old, worm-eaten wooden table filled with what Horace decided must be an artist’s supplies. There were notched candles. There were cloves. There were strangely shaped bottles filled with various colors of oils. When he walked to it he observed seeds, matches, and a shot glass.

He turned around when he heard the door open behind him, and he moved as quietly as he could out of the light. Rhiannon backed into the room, a round candlestick in her hand. She turned and glided silently across the room, and when she crossed the moonlight, the room seemed to glow with her.

She went to the table, and lit the notched candle using the tall thin one attached to the holder. She mumbled something, but Horace couldn’t make out what it was. He could see her silhouette moving her hands up the bizarrely shaped candle, bottom to top, 9 times. He counted. She sighed confidently.

Antony whispered, “Now’s your chance. Just leave.”

Horace shook his head and watched with a nostalgic smile.

When she turned around to leave the room she saw him, and they were both startled. Horace, already in the corner, tried to back away, but just smashed his body awkwardly into the wall. She dropped her candle, and it rolled, lit, across the wooden floor toward him. He knelt, nearly falling over, and picked it up. He stood up, and found her standing directly in front of him. He handed it back to her. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

Rhiannon smiled compassionately at him. “Me too.” She looked briefly over her shoulder at the strange candle, and disappointment tinted her blue eyes.

Horace couldn’t look at her. He noticed his shoelaces didn’t match.

“I really am trying my best.” She looked back at Horace. “To be a decent person I mean. I know a lot of people think I’m stuck up, or whatever, but, really, I’m not.”

Horace said nothing.

“Okay?” She whispered.

He looked up. “Okay.” His stare, while entirely unintentional, was almost rude in its intensity.

There have been, throughout human history, quite a few women renowned for their beautiful hair. None of them, however, had anything on Rhiannon. Lady Godiva and Rapunzel, for example, were each known for the lengths of theirs. Rhiannon’s didn’t come close to such a ghastly stretch. It fell, seemingly effortlessly, down her neck and covered her shoulders as a quiet brown river lightly licking its banks, or a blanket under which the slender shoulders snuggled greedily.

Helen of Troy and Lucretia Borgia were sufficiently beautiful that they seemed almost to be able to cast a spell on men simply by looking at them. They were Anti-Medusas. Horace was as inspired as any Trojan.

When she saw Horace staring through his hormone haze, she smiled shyly and brushed her hair slowly back from her forehead. Then she nervously moved her fingers through it like a tide stealing sand from a moonlit beach as it slides up and down.

“I mean, do you ever ask yourself if it’s even possible to make everyone happy without hurting someone?”

“No… not until just now.”

“If you ever figure it out…” her eyes shimmered in the candlelight. They both smiled. Rhiannon, he decided, was a girl who knew how to run her fingers through her hair. They were having a moment.

The banging on the door made them both jump, but Rhiannon held firmly to her candle, and Horace slithered back into his dark corner silently.

“Rhiannon? You in there?” Horace recognized Bob’s tenor voice.

She took her hand away from her hair. “I’ll be right out.” The moment was over.

“There’s a party downstairs, and you’re being a lousy hostess.”

She smiled, almost tenderly at him, and left the room, the notched candle burning. Horace was alone in the dark.

The Guardian of Forever
September 2, 2019
3:18:19 AM

Horace shook his head. “No. It does no one any good. She was never real for me. But she represented an Ideal. She was my Dream of Perfection, and I would miss that feeling too much.”

“I don’t know how that timeline would go. You might end up marrying her.”

“That’s selfish. She has a life she loves. I would be giving her something less. I would never have had the money to give her what she has.”

“Perhaps something more valuable?”

Horace rolled his eyes. “What’s next?”

Antony shrugged, as though the answer were obvious. “Your Greatest Sin.”

A new image appeared within The Guardian.

“That’s the room we built for Mom in The Shithole. My roommates, Albert and Jeanine, painted it, and we put all of her favorite things in it. It had a special bed the dog could jump on so Mom could still sleep with her.”

“And you took your old Mother’s money.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“Yes,” Antony lit a new cigarette. “It was. You just try to rationalize what you don’t like about yourself. You always have.”

“Look,” Horace tried to explain, “just before Dad died, I promised…”

Phoenix, Arizona
January 15, 2017
12:37 PM

“… that you would take care of your mother. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, Mom,” Horace said into the phone, doing his best not to show frustration. “And I really did do my best. I had you living with me for four and a half years.”

“So why can’t I live where I want? Everyone always decides what’s right for me. What about my feelings? What about what I want?”

Horace sighed. “What do you want, Mom?”

“I want to live with my family. I want to be where I’m loved.” There were tears in her voice. “Are you telling me my own family doesn’t love me anymore?”

“Of course not, Mom.”

“You can have all my money. My doctors will come to the house. We can be together. I won’t have to sit here like a piece of meat waiting to rot.”

“It’s not about the money. I don’t know if I can take care of you well enough.”

“You retired. You have time. And I don’t need much. I just need… I just need…” And now Marie Singleman was crying. “I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up anymore.”

Horace’s heart melted. His mother deserved better. He could do better. He would do better…

…

And he got his roommates to clean out the extra room, paint it, furnish it, make it ready for her. He got all of the paperwork for her removal from the Group Home done.

And then his family heard about the move, swept in against him, promised legal action that would force his mother to take the stand and finish what was left of her deeply confused brain, and Marie slept in her room only three times before the move was shut down.

He had held her while she cried on his shoulder. He kept reassuring her that they would still talk every night. He promised she would never be alone.

Sunday, February 12, 2017
4:25 PM
Phoenix, Arizona.

Horace sat staring at his computer. There was the bank account. There was enough money to avoid eviction. He could click it, transfer money from Marie’s account to his, pay his landlord, and avoid the Sheriff’s office in the morning. All he had to do was click the damn button.

Antony and his Horace stood invisibly next to the desk. Antony handed Horace another cigarette and lit it for him.

“So,” mumbled Antony, “what’s it going to be?”

Horace exhaled. “You want me to stop him…”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“It would mix the Elements properly?”

Antony nodded.

“And… I get evicted. And Marion and I are on the streets tomorrow afternoon. We’re living in my car. And God only knows what happens to Albert and Jeanine. I’m sure they’ll figure something out. They always do. What happens in this timeline?”

Antony shook his head. He took a long drag off his cigarette.

Horace watched himself fighting an inner battle. He knew all the signs. There was the quivering finger over the mouse. There was the moving his hand away, and then putting it back. There was the glow in his eyes as his mind turned faster and faster. He was about to reach a decision. The moment would be gone.

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice,” said Antony, although it came out as Geddy Lee’s voice singing “Free Will.”

Horace nodded. He unplugged his counterpart’s computer. The seated Horace looked at the active Horace. He didn’t see him. Seated Horace nodded, inhaled and exhaled deeply, got up from the desk and left the office.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017
3:14:49 PM
Phoenix, Arizona
Bethany Home Road
Horace’s Car

“Ya still got 11 seconds,” said Antony from the passenger seat of the Nissan.

Horace took a moment to absorb his surroundings. The car reeked of puke. His dog, Marion, was licking him frantically. “I thought I died in 2019. What the hell?”

“Changed the time line. 9 seconds.”

“Yeah, but won’t this hurt Mom worse than my taking the money would have?”

“You made that decision a couple years later when you took 50 units of insulin without eating. You knew what you were doing.”

“I was homeless. When the remainder of life is to be nothing but pain –”

“6 seconds. This one isn’t on you. It’s not intentional. It’s untreated DKA. You’re in the clear. The Elements came out fine.”

“So, you can say…”

Antony smiled as only Brando could.

“This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world…”

He put his hand on Horace’s shoulder.

“This was a man.”

A tear of joy started to form in Horace’s eye, but it didn’t have time to become properly liquid. There was no more than a twinkling little star before they lost their light.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Can We Have a Star Trek Economy?


The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century… The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard, First Contact

I loved Star Trek, as a child, because of its cool technology. Who wouldn’t want to have a gun that doesn’t have to kill? Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to beam from one place to another? And, who wouldn’t want to carry around an instrument that allowed you to talk to people thousands of miles from you? And, as I grew up, I saw some of those wonderful devices invented. You’re probably reading this on one of them.

There are parts of Star Trek that probably simply can’t exist. In fact, its most basic concept is almost impossible. We’re never going to travel beyond the speed of light. Einstein showed that to me when I was 15, and no one has ever been able to show me he was wrong. If we produce a warp engine, I will be ecstatic to admit my error. And, I will be equally excited to acknowledge my mistake in my near certainty that we will never be able to beam down to a planet as soon as we do it.

We do have weapons that are approaching the phaser. One need not fire lead bullets anymore. Tasers exist. And nearly 2/3 of the population of the planet now has a cell phone which is at least as good as Captain Kirk’s communicator. There are even cell phones that can act almost as Tricorders in their ability to measure certain functions of the body.

While some of Roddenberry’s fantasy can never be reality, much of it already is. And we’re better off for it. But what of the rest of his vision?

I love Star Trek, as an adult, because of its extraordinary society. Their greatest concerns in life truly are bettering themselves and the rest of humanity. Their physiological needs are all met. For the most part, their safety needs are met. They aren’t struggling to pay rent or put food on the table. Much, but not all, crime has been eliminated because people have no need to commit crimes to fulfill their physiological needs. I’m much more likely to go rob a store in order to feed my wife and children than I am to do it for the fun of it. If my physiological needs are met, most of my motives for committing crimes evaporate. I expect the same is true for you, and for the guy next to you, too.

The higher level needs of Maslow’s famous hierarchy are all needs to be met by each individual. How one finds love and a sense of belonging is an expression of identity; it’s not the work of the world, but of each unique person in each one’s unique way. This is also true of Esteem and “Self Actualization,” or the ability to be creative and to work for the benefit of the rest of the world. The world’s interference in those endeavors would be a Borg-like threat to our individuality.

But I believe that we live in a world in which we are now able to meet the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy for all human beings. We have the resources and the technology necessary.

It seems to me that The Economics of Star Trek that I admire and envy so much are based on three realities.

  1. A Post Scarcity Society. There are thousands of hours to be done on this subject, and the debate about the use of the Replicator, alone, is sufficient to be worthy of a Doctoral Dissertation, but I’m using this in the limited sense that the world is capable of providing all the basic human needs: food, water, shelter, medical care, clothing, and the means to participate in society (transportation, communication, and education). Our civilization is already capable of meeting the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy for every human being.
  2. A Resource Based Society. There’s a group called The Venus Project that is actually working toward achieving this goal. What is it? It begins with the radical idea that the planet is the heritage of all people. We need to work out how to use the resources the planet can produce to provide what people need as efficiently as possible. This is their basic goal, from their website:

The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today’s world.

The Venus Project

You can learn more about them here:
https://www.thevenusproject.com/

3. An Empathetic Civilization. The idea is that we extend our empathy not just to our blood ties, or our tribal ties, or our religious ties, or our national ties, but to the entire species, and finally even to our shared biosphere. We know we have the technology necessary for this because we can all feel empathy at the same time in response to disasters. This is true when we hear of horrifying tsunamis, devastating earthquakes, or miners trapped beneath the Earth. We have global communication, and we know almost instantly what is happening to each other. Just as when one infant in a Day Care begins crying, all the others will join them within a few minutes (this is due to something we’ve discovered recently called Mirror Neurons. We are soft-wired for Empathy. There’s a neuroscientist named Marco Iacoboni who’s done interesting research on this ), so will human beings share the distress of others in trouble. Empathy is, in my view, the most important human emotion, even if “The Empath” was something less than Star Trek’s most successful episode. The ability to feel for others is what makes us human. If we have the resources and the technology to meet the first two of Maslow’s needs on the hierarchy, people can spend their lives meeting the last three. In other words, once people no longer need to be concerned with physiological or safety needs, they can spend their lives working on the others.

What would be the result of such a world?

My crystal ball ran out of batteries, so I can only guess. I believe we would see a reduction in crime (but not its elimination), we would see better and greater technologies emerging because people have the time to devote to learning instead of trying to feed their families, and we would see, most importantly, a happier world where people really, honestly can work for the betterment of themselves and the rest of humanity.

I’m told this is fantasy, and worse, it’s Socialism. I reject that idea. It can be accomplished, but it’s a question of changing our mind set. I have written quite a bit about the need to increase our empathy, and that embracing Art is an effective means of doing that. You can find that here.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/empathy-and-art/

I believe it is wrong to judge a person based on how much money that person earns. The Value of a Person is much more than their ability to monetize their skills, passions, and abilities. Our Value to each other is in what we can do for one another. Empathy is also a part of one’s actual value. I have also written about that, and it’s available here if you need me to make the case more strongly.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/25/the-value-of-a-person/

So, will we ever live long and prosper? I don’t know. I do know, however, it’s worth it to try.

For Roddenberry to accomplish his society, he needed a Eugenics War and then World War III. The society became a barter system when we had to start over because we had destroyed a quarter of the Earth’s population and many of our resources. One of my friends, a lifelong member of Slytherin House, believes we could manage this right now by simply removing the populations of India and China and replacing them with trees and arable land. While Kodos might admire her thinking and endorse her methods, I can’t.

Can we realize Roddenberry’s vision without the need for violence and destruction? I certainly hope so. I also know that Edith Keeler believed as I do. And, when she managed to talk FDR into delaying our entrance into World War II the results were disastrous. We lost the War and with it the concept of Freedom. However…

“She was right. Peace was the way.”
“She was right. But at the wrong time.”


– Kirk and Spock, “City on the Edge of Forever”

Keeler asked Kirk, “Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.”

Kirk answered, “Let me help… A hundred years or so from now I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.”

That happened on Earth in 1930. We’re just about a hundred years from that time, now. Is it time for us to begin down Edith Keeler’s path? I don’t know.

But if you’re afraid of something…

Let Me Help.